


Get Back Home at a Quarter to Ten

by sageness



Category: Canadian 6 Degrees, Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: Canon - Movie, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-17
Updated: 2008-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:53:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/sageness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't let the drummer have a microphone. It'll just end in tears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Back Home at a Quarter to Ten

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Brynn in the hard_core_hero challenge.

  
It was nine twenty and Foghorn, the Jetway's sound guy, was starting to make noise at the manager about never booking these punk-ass shits ever again if they couldn't' be bothered to show up to goddamned sound check.

"And who the fuck am I, then?" Pipe yelled at him from the stage.

"Um, hi." John waved from the steps at stage right where he sat restringing his bass. "Sorry," John added.

"Whatever," Foghorn said.

Larouche looked from one to the next of them. His eyes were glassy and his sneer was brutal like Joe's. Pipe couldn't hear what he said, but he figured it was something like, "We'll see what the door take is, asshole," because that's what _he'd_ say if he were the sound guy for one of these dives. But under his breath, Pipe said to John, "I thought they were just going to get burgers. It's been like, two hours."

"No it hasn't," John said.

"Yes it has."

"It's only been one hour and five minutes."

"How do you fucking know?" Pipe said.

John pointed to the clock behind the bar, the one that Pipe had looked at to know it was nearly nine thirty. "Oh." Pipe spat off the edge of the stage and strode back and forth. "Well, where the fuck are they?" The club couldn't open the doors until the stage was clear.

"Man, I gotta get these levels set," Foghorn said. "I got shit to do before the show."

Pipe made a face at John, who snickered into his guitar strap, then turned toward the main floor. "Sure, I hear ya, man. We'll just..." They'd already done the drum kit, but then John didn't like his strings, so they'd taken a break for him to switch them out. Pipe didn't know a single chord on guitars...but what the fuck. "John, take Billy's strat and sing something."

Pipe grabbed Billy's scrappy brown electric off its stand at stage left. It was plugged into its amp already. Billy had taped the amp's knobs down with packing tape so nobody could fuck with his settings, so that was one less thing to worry about, at least.

John took the guitar reverently. It looked weirdly small in his hands. John strummed it a few times and stood up in front of his mike. "I, uh, wow, these strings are thin. I haven't done this in—"

"Just play something!" Pipe whined.

John strummed a few chords, gathering rhythm and volume. Then he launched into "Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go—I wanna be sedated." Only he was watching his fingers on the fretboard and mumbling the words.

The drumline pounded in Pipe's head. He pulled his sticks out of his back pocket and started tapping out the beat. Then Foghorn said into the sound booth's intercom, "Get on center mike, dude."

"Sing, man!" Pipe yelled at John.

John mumble-sang, "I wanna be sedated."

Pipe knew what he had to do, even though all he fucking wanted was a fucking cheeseburger. Billy was probably doing a groupie in the bus. Joe was probably out scoring some blow, the fuckers.

Pipe managed not to trip over the obstacle course of cables and effects boxes littering the stage—and what a fuckload of crap they had crammed onto one little square of space—until he got to Joe's mike. "Test, one-two," he said. His own voice boomed out over the top of John's mumble. Then it diminished down-down-down like a little man sliding down a drain.

John's playing broke off with a twang. "I don't really like that song very much."

Pipe stared at him for a few long seconds. He'd been shouting, "I wanna be sedated!" when the guitar stopped. He felt off balance, like John had just ripped a rug out from under him. "Uh..."

Slowly, John started picking out the chords for something else. Something...horrific.

"You never close your eyes when I kiss your lips," John warbled.

"Oh, hell no!" Pipe shouted.

"And there's no tenderness like before in your fingertips."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Pipe bawled into the microphone, accidentally matching John's rhythm perfectly. "This isn't even funny, man!"

"You're trying hard not to show it, baby..." John grinned at Pipe, showing all his teeth.

Pipe flipped him the bird. Turning back to Foghorn, who was laughing his fucking ass off, Pipe cocked his head back and forth, thrust his hips out, and counted off four beats with his sticks. "I can't get no sat-is-fac-tion," he sang.

Foghorn let out a loud guffaw. "Get a load of this douche."

After a couple of false starts, John found the rhythm guitar's line.

"Though I try, and I try, and I try, and I try." Pipe took a deep breath and belted, "I CAN'T GET NO!" ...and felt someone tap him twice on the shoulder.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Joe asked, all scary-calm-as-shit.

Pipe stared. Then he looked to John. John was unbuttoning the guitar strap and handing it over to Billy—who looked half-pissed and half like he was about to piss himself laughing. Only, it was Billy, so—

Joe shoved him with his shoulder, so he stumbled to the left a few steps before he caught himself. "What're ya doing, Pipe?"

"Uh, sound check?" he said, when he found his voice. "The guy..." He pointed toward the booth.

"They can fucking wait. We do this as a band, moron. We _are_ a band, aren't we?"

"Well, yeah," Pipe said. He took another step back and his heel caught on the corner of one of Billy's fucking pedals. He flailed out to catch himself with Billy's microphone, but it tipped over under his weight. "Fuck!" he yelled as he went down on his ass. He landed on the drumsticks he'd jammed back in his pocket when Joe showed up, and hello, fucking ow, man! Then Billy's mike stand came down on top of him, hard, and the microphone hit him in the eye.

"Motherfuck!" Pipe yelled, as everyone else in the whole fucking club lost their shit laughing. "Fucking hell!" He sat up, tears streaming. "Jesus fucking Christ, ow!"

"Serves you right," Joe said, "screwing with the system."

"Oh, there's a system now, is there?" Pipe said. "Since when is there a fucking system, Joe?"

Joe ignored him. Billy was done checking the tuning of the guitar—not that John had changed anything—and was edging past Joe to put it back on its stand.

"Where's the food?" John asked.

Joe looked at Billy, licked his thumb, and adjusted himself in his pants. "Backstage," he said. "Let's do this thing. You can eat later." Billy snorted. Pipe didn't even want to know.

"What the fuck ever, man," he said, holding his eye. "This fucking hurts."

Joe glared impatiently down at him. "Can we get a bag of ice or something?" Joe said into the mike. He was looking at the bartender, who was sitting on his ass not even paying attention. "Since our drummer is apparently a little challenged when it comes to, uh, standing."

"Oh, fuck you," Pipe said.

Joe spat. It landed right on the hole in the knee of Pipe's jeans, which…Christ, Joe and his thing for spitting. At least it wasn't piss. But a minute later, Joe slapped a plastic sack of ice into Pipe's hand. "Don't say I never did anything for you. Now, get up. We got work to do."

Grousing to himself, Pipe tied off the sack and strapped it to his face with a roll of gaffer's tape he found on the drum platform. A few minutes later, Billy and Joe were stalking the stage with reckless ease, singing, "Who the hell d'you think you are?"


End file.
